But the point isn't that they dumbed it down. It's that the crux of their argument is basically, "You should be able to track the stolen emails." Which is fundamentally not true.
Easy example:
1. Download emails via IMAP
2. Disconnect from Tor
3. Copy emails via FTP to wherever
#1 and #3 have different IP addresses and TCP connections. The whole "packet number" thing is just ludicrous--that's not how the Force works!
There are of course lots of details here about potentially piercing Tor with traffic analysis and compromised onion routers, etc, etc. But their description of how the system works and why the NSA should definitely be able to give 100% attribution is literally wrong. It's not a simplification--it's just literally not how the code works.
I read it differently. They present three hypothetical sources for the emails:
Leak at DNC
Hacking
Leak at NSA
The reconstruction of emails explains why an NSA employee could be the leaker. The technical argument about detecting hacking is unrelated (except that a packet reconstruction of all DNC traffic would contain evidence of the attack and data transfer, which the NSA can supposedly reliably data mine).
Easy example:
1. Download emails via IMAP 2. Disconnect from Tor 3. Copy emails via FTP to wherever
#1 and #3 have different IP addresses and TCP connections. The whole "packet number" thing is just ludicrous--that's not how the Force works!
There are of course lots of details here about potentially piercing Tor with traffic analysis and compromised onion routers, etc, etc. But their description of how the system works and why the NSA should definitely be able to give 100% attribution is literally wrong. It's not a simplification--it's just literally not how the code works.